France 2016 UEFA Reprise 10 Euro Silver Proof Coin

Description:

The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) 2016 Euro Championship is being held in France, and the Monnaie de Paris has issued a set of three 10-euro silver coins honoring the quadrennial sporting event. The UEFA oversees association football (soccer) throughout the continent Europe. Interestingly, while most of the 55 association members are located on the continent, several originate from Asia. The UEFA was founded on June 15, 1954 in Basel, Switzerland and originally had 25 members; by the 1990s, the number of members doubled.

One of the several roles the UEFA assumes is to review competitions among its members and uphold the quality and presence of national football throughout Eurasia. Meanwhile, the UEFA aims to enhance sporting opportunities for the teams, coaches, players, and fans. The UEFA Nations League has four individual leagues, and each league has four groups consisting of three or four teams. Some UEFA events are competitive in nature, and some are friendly exhibitions. Each of the leagues is ordered by the strength and ranking of its teams, which compete with each other and advance through playoff matches.

The UEFA Champions League consists of the organization’s top clubs and is one of the most prestigious competitions in the world. The 2016 UEFA European Championship, also called the UEFA Euro 2016 or Euro 2016, will be the 15th such event and will be held in France from June 10 through July 10, 2016.

Obverse:

A football player is seen executing a move known as a volley kick, which is a type of scissor kick in which the ball is kicked at an angled direction by the player’s leg. The ball the player appears to be kicking is actually a three-dimensional gilded silver sphere that protrudes through both the obverse and reverse of the coin. This unique design element is featured on all three coins in the set.

The UEFA logo is featured between the player’s outstretched legs, and the entire design element is contained with an abstract-designed hexagonal feature that echoes both the hexagonal sewing pattern on a soccer ball and “l’Hexagone”, the famous geometric nickname for mainland France. In the background of the coin are smaller hexagonal and other geometric shapes that convey the sense of revelry in the football stadium.

Reverse:

The central design element on the reverse of the coin is a soccer field whose two opposing goal lines are demarcated by two elementally basic representations of the Arc de Triomphe, a famous landmark that was built in Paris in 1836. The Arc de Triomphe pays homage to those who died in France during the French Revolutionary (1792-1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815).

The abstract design includes four human figures cheering with their hands in the air within a larger hexagonal design element similar to the one that anchors the obverse. On the center left of the reverse are the initials RF, representing the coin’s country of origin, Republique Francaise, or France. On the bottom left of the coin, near the seven o’ clock position, is the date of the coin, 2016, which is surrounded by the mintmark and mint master’s mark.

The denomination of the coin, 10 EURO, is expressed in two horizontal lines near the bottom center of the coin, with the other side of the three-dimensional gilded soccer ball representing the “0” in the denomination “10.” This reverse design is shared among the three UEFA commemorative coins.